glass rivers
by fragile dreaming
Summary: under Mabase bridge, the contrasting effect is prevalent to all


word count: 1044

* * *

She smells of cherry lip gloss and stale cigarettes and Naota holds his breath when her arms wrap around his neck and the tip of her nose finds its way into the collar of his jacket.

He shifts away from her and says, "Why are you like this today?"

Mamimi digs her nose deeper into his collar and he can feel her hot breath on his skin.

"You smell like the ocean," she whispers. "Don't move, Takkun."

Her fingers dig into his shoulder and he is rooted in his spot under the bridge, where the sun beats down on his fingers and shoes.

He sighs.

.

At the same time he looks down, she looks up.

She is drenched from head-to-toe as she stands in the river, squeezing her skirt of water. Her brown eyes are blank.

"Naota?"

Gaku shakes his shoulder and almost as if being shaken awake from a dream, Naota is the first to break the eye contact.

.

He catches the _Olympus XA_ in the corner of his eye.

The camera aims in his direction but doesn't quite catch him whole. He realizes he is just a fragment of the overall shot; an enhancement for something greater.

Mamimi smiles, lets her cigarette hang loose on the corner of her mouth, and says, "Smile, Takkun!"

.

He's not his brother.

Mamimi clings to Naota tightly, like she would someone who has just saved her life.

Naota's fingers hold so loosely to the brim of her sweater that they slip and fall and dangle at his sides.

He's not his brother, he wants to say. But he doesn't.

She snuggles her head into his shoulder and her hair tickles his collar bone and he wonders how different things would be if he were, in fact, his brother.

.

"I might leave this city," she says, adorning Canti with a halo and a shirt that says _the best robot_.

Naota, who translates sentences into English for his homework, completely stops. His hand doesn't move, even when he commands it to.

"What?" He turns to her and she doesn't take her eyes off Canti. "What do you mean?"

"It's as it sounds."

"Mamimi, don't be sarcastic."

"I'm not," Mamimi finally turns to him and he notices she doesn't have a cigarette in her mouth. "I'm telling you the truth."

Canti perks his head up and looks at Naota with a question mark on his screen.

Naota tries not to show his trembling lip.

"Why would you leave?"

"There's nothing here for me."

She dusts the halo and pats Canti's shirt twice, muttering something with a smile.

Naota forces himself to return his attention to his homework. He can't hear anything above the erratic thumping of his heart.

.

He loves her, he thinks.

She loves his brother.

It's in the way that she looks at him when he confesses to her that it's impossible to deny. He can't compete with someone who's taken up every inch of her heart.

For days after that, she stays away from the bridge. Only Canti keeps him company.

.

He walks past her high school.

She leans against the brick outer wall, surrounded by people who laugh, but not with her. Not like it's a funny joke that everyone can join in.

They laugh at her.

Naota stares helplessly. Mamimi has her head down, her magenta hair shading her face, protecting her. He doesn't realize he's stopped until a girl glances up at him and scowls.

"Keep moving, grade schooler. There's nothing to see here."

Mamimi sees him through the curtain of her hair and Naota wants to help her. He wants to grab the water out of his backpack and douse them in it. He wants to kick them with all his might and tell them to leave her alone. He wants so desperately to do _something_ – but he's not his older brother.

He can't save her like he can and hope for the best.

She notices it too and lowers her eyes. For the rest of the walk home, his shoes squeak with anger and his palms burn from uncut fingernails digging into his skin.

.

He hates that he's not as strong as his brother.

He hates that his brother left him with his girlfriend, then found a new one.

He hates that he can't be seen in a different way by Mamimi.

She sits with her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes soaking in the glistening river. Naota sits spaces apart from her, only watching. Her cigarette burns with a loneliness as the _never knows best_ slowly fades out of existence.

.

The high school buzzes with news as he walks past and it's only when he gets close enough that he understands.

Naota thinks he's never run as fast before as he has at that moment.

The distance between the school, the river, and her house – it's all too far apart. Her front porch sits empty with traces of lingering presence and the glistening river that she watched intensely glistens as if she was never there.

Canti plays with butterflies in the absence of Mamimi. A lighter lays next to him, a fresh cigarette with the words _never knows best_ right beside it. A photograph of Naota is underneath the two.

He feels angry. A deep burning begins at the base of his chest and he wants to scream. He wants to set everything on fire that hurt her so much until everything is okay and she is back underneath the bridge, talking about _overflowing_ or holding the baseball bat with the wrong hand.

Naota sits beside the items and doesn't touch them. In this position, watching the setting sun and the reflection off the gentle waves, he feels closer to her than he has in months.

He stays until dusk, when Canti bugs him to get up and his eyes sting more than ever.

.

A small postcard from America reads,

 _I hope you are okay, Takkun!_

 _Best wishes, Mamimi xx_

He stares at it long and hard, memorizing her handwriting, until he closes it off in a desk along with the old cigarette, unused lighter, and his photograph.

He thinks this is how things should remain between them.

.

owari


End file.
